Meeting our local artists - Lisa Woods

One the best parts about our recent work on the Fibrowatt episode was the chance to get to know our Page County neighbors a little better. There was a wide range of folks from the community who got involved in doing the research about the environmental and health related impacts of a chicken litter plant on the area.

One of the people we had the opportunity to meet is local artist Lisa Woods, whose website, http://www.punkspeak.com/,  describes her as, “Known for her cat carvings and paintings, Lisa Woods is an artist who loves the outdoors, working with wood, and Tempera Batiks. Inspired by her surroundings as she creates a variety of work ranging from wood carvings to original tempera batiks, all of her work is original with some limited print reproductions available.”

Although my phone cam doesn’t do the work justice, Lisa came by for a visit a few weeks back and shared some photos of her work on note cards. We got together for the visit to talk about Page County issues and Fibrowatt, but also because we had a small piece of the apple tree that hadn’t been taken away, and Lisa thought she might be able to work with it. On one of the photos here you can see a work in progress, how the sculpture develops out of the hardwood. There is a thought that the apple stump in the front yard and the dogwood stump in the back may have one of these pieces inside of them waiting to come out.

Lisa spent some time working with the Page County EDA a few years back, and her insights on the strategy and goals of the organization have helped me here on the blog as I try to learn and understand more about some of the economic issues that we see there. It’s very interesting to hear about the things that have been tried in the community – things that worked in some cases, and others that haven’t – as we try to deal with the chronic under-employment and the ups and downs of agriculture and tourism, two very cyclical industries.

Lisa’s work is shown on a continuous basis at C’ville Arts cooperative studio in Charlottesville. The website is http://www.charlottesvillearts.com/ , and it turns out that its located downtown in the pedestrian mall, a great location. We’re looking forward to heading over there sometime this spring.

Finally, as I prepared for this post this week, Lisa sent news that her work will be on display all month at The Cat’s Cradle, 124 S. Main St., in Harrisonburg. The gallery will be participating in the first Fridays event this weekend also – link is http://downtownhburg.wordpress.com/2010/03/30/first-fridays-downtown-museum-gallery-walk-April-2/ . Lisa also has some work on display at the Shenandoah Valley Frame Shop in Shenandoah.

So, despite the stress and challenges of the community’s successful effort to stop the initiative to bring a Fibrowatt plant to Page County, we had some very positive outcomes from it. For Mary and me, the chance to meet Lisa and some other neighbors was a big part of that.